The Croods

The Croods
PG -- 93 min. -- IMDB

I'll warn you now. I have issues with this movie. I was even skeptical when I saw the trailers. DreamWorks appears to be on a rollercoaster when it comes to their animation movies. Some are good and some are bad... really bad. *cough*sequels*coughs* I LOVE Rise of the Guardians and How to Train Your Dragon, but I don't love this one. It feels off.

The first issue I have is the beginning, or rather it felt like there were two beginnings. Eep, the protagonist, does this voice-over about how other families keep dying around them. That's all and great but a bit doom-and-gloom for the kids, don't ya think? The bloody hand-prints don't help with that much. And then I say there were two beginnings because setting up how the family works took WAY TOO LONG. That took almost twenty-five minutes to set-up, and that's a big percentage of a movie that's only ninety minutes long. But I guess they could do this because of my next point.

The story. Plot. Whatever you like to call it. There really isn't a story. Most of the whole story is about running as fast as you can away from impending danger. That's the main plot. Kind of boring after a while. Then other things are added in like the dad, Grug, having to accept that new ideas aren't all that bad. I get that. Everyone gets that. (They just forget it a lot of the time...) He also had to accept that this may be pushing himself away from the ones he loved. Okay, that part wasn't that bad. However, this leads me to the next point.

I really felt like there were two main characters. I had an issue with this. I was so ready to follow along with Eep. She's the interesting one. She's curious and brave while her family is not. Everything was evolving around her point of view, but that changed when Guy came along. This is when Grug became the main character. Suddenly we needed to be worried about him and his point-of-view. Once this happened there was this disconnect between the two halves. It would have been nice to see Grug's changes from Eep's perspective since it was already the established one. I don't know. It felt weird to invest in one character and then jump to the next.

And now to some of the good points. Seeing Eep and Guy falling for each other was pretty cute. This leads to a few of the funny parts of the movie. There are other funny parts that get you going, as well. The younger family members will definitely appreciate those moments. Of course the animation is good. This is DreamWorks after-all, and they got their start doing animation. Lots of color, lots of texture, all convincing.

So after all this blah-blah-blah, what's my stand? Is it entertaining? Yes. Is it worth watching in the theatre? No. That's why it only gets three stars.